Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Today our friends at Christian Solidarity Worldwide released a statement expressing their “grave concern for the future of individual freedoms, as a number of states at the UN Durban Review Conference push an agenda which seeks to protect religions and governments, at the expense of individuals and their rights.” The CSW statement goes on to say, “The week-long conference, the official theme of which is tackling racism, is widely held by human rights NGOs to have been hijacked by a number of states advocating measures for ‘combating defamation of religion’ instead…. In seeking to protect ‘religion’ from defamation it is clear that existing international human rights protections will be undermined, specifically freedom of religion and freedom of expression.”

We have blogged a great deal in recent months about the efforts of various Islamic states to push forward this agenda in the United Nations and share this concern of CSW’s. We support Canada’s early decision not to attend this conference and applaud those who have joined in boycotting this event, refusing to provide any sort of tacit approval to any statements that may arise from it.